Electronics made using diamond-based chips would have many advantages, but have been hard to make – a new technique involving sticky tape could change that
This thin wafer of diamond is also very flexible Nature, DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-08218-x A new way to make ultra-thin diamond wafers using sticky tape could help produce diamond-based electronics, which might one day be a useful alternative to silicon-based designs. Diamond has unusual electronic properties: it is both a good insulator and allows electrons with certain energies to move with little resistance. This can translate to being able to handle higher energies with greater efficiency than conventional silicon chip designs. Advertisement However, producing working diamond chips requires large and very thin wafers, similar to the thin silicon wafers used to build modern computer chips, which have proved tricky to create. Now, Zhiqin Chu at the University of Hong Kong and his colleagues have found a way to produce extremely thin and flexible diamond wafers, using sticky…